Another grueling day topped off with…. the training of a new flunkee at work tonight. I loathe training shifts. No Xanga for me. Looks like nobody loved me today anyway. C’est la vie.

Room 1059 Spencer Engineering Building at 1pm, there is going to be a talk on gender issues in video games by a Princeton PHD. I’m skipping my networking class to be there. They actually moved my class for this special presentation (It’s a comfortable room, theater style). My prof wouldn’t say what it was about on Wednesday, I think he secretly wants to go and doesn’t want to loose half his class to it. (He does a lot of development coordination in the realm of 3D gaming.) This should be a fun talk. These are two areas I am very familiar with. (When I was living with my girlfriend? she was writing her masters thesis on gender issues, so I am a hardened veteran of these types of debates, always forced into taking the side of the sexist, oppressive man.)

A long day. Mentally draining. Mellow music required. I think my dreams may have died 3 years ago but I keep refusing to believe it… Everyone seems to have such faith in me. I probably come off as quiet and capable, on top of everything, in control. I have major internal turmoil though. I really need to graduate this summer… my family expects it… So braindead. I don’t think there is a good post in me tonight. I wish I had my own personal Thai masseuse.

Chilly out. I think my winter coat is now a permanent fixture. The first snow melted but it will be back very soon. A pretty mundane day. I screwed the cable back into my idiot box tonight (cable comes free with my rent). It’s been a couple weeks… I never missed it. I was tempted by a televised Raptors game. I can’t stand the pervasive mindworms that come on every 5 minutes. I hate them. Why do people put up with it…. I’m cold. Listened to The White Stripes and Zwan today. I’m still sick of Elephant, the Zwan album was great though. Randomness. TV thoughts. I’m unscrewing it again. I would rather listen to music and my mind.

A photo of me in my glasses? Alright, here’s one titled “The Moose“.

2025 me here: Not knowing where these old pictures went is a bummer.

I don’t usually wear my glasses even though I should. I am barely legal to drive without them. I didn’t need them until age 21, so I am still kind of resistant to using them on a regular basis. I like putting them on in lecture or the computer labs though, it is still a novelty.

Ok, you  unbelievers… I caught it sneaking up behind me. Then I managed to get a close up.

WAH WAH WAAAAAHHHHH. He looks a lot less sinister in the day time doesn’t he? (It’s Meowth from Pokemon. I guess he just couldn’t resist playing with it while I was at work) Thank you to Meghan_to_the_max and Sarahndipidee for giving me the reaction I was looking for. Hee hee.

Goodnight.

BEing drunk feels soooo good. ALtered states are fun once and while… :p Drunk Xanga commenting! Episode 5 not as good, I want to be in a land where no one works. My Mp3’s kick ass.

Kino’s Travels episode four was particularly beautiful. This is an amazing series. Poetic and satisfying. On to episode five and my second beer. 😉

Emerging from a storm of stress, exams and assignments battered and bruised… but relieved. Tonight, I relax! Total slothness. Tomorrow I will gear up again. Slept all day, in pajamas still, drinking a beer. I realized something tonight. I REALLY miss watching anime!! I was looking for a good anime webring to join (one typically not filled with teenie boppers) with zero luck. Maybe I will start my own, one for 20 pluses only. Any suggestions for a name? I am going to watch some Kino’s Travels now.. so overdue. I deserve this so much.

Some information came to light on those extra images today… You know… ahhh nevermind.. I’ll post it later. (ooo the suspense!) I love Al Gore

Someone is messing with me… I think. I don’t know. Tomorrow things should be back to a semblance of normal for better or worse. What am I rambling about?

I leave my webcam and computer on all the time. There is a little button on the top of it that if you press it takes a picture. The software automatically names the pictures “Picture1.gif”, “Picture2.gif” etc, incrementally like that. I had five or so pictures stored in the default picture folder that the camera directs the saved pictures to. I was looking at them today… flirting with the idea of putting another one up. The last time I used the camera here are the results… see, that’s my apartment and an unshaven me, all in focus, all normal, nothing special (It’s labelled Picture5.gif). But the very next picture was this, note that it is totally out of focus, it is definitely my apartment though. I didn’t remember taking it but whatever, maybe I forgot it was in there (labelled Picture6.gif)….and finally, labelled Picture7.gif…. this one!!! WTF is that?!!!? I checked the time stamps of when the pictures were last modified/created. It was 4:13am last night while I was at work… I don’t know what to think of that…  My reality is so messed up right now. I don’t have any roommates in case you are wondering… Does someone have a key to my place? Does that have anything to do with the scratching I hear at night sometimes? Does it look like a face to you too?

It was worse than I expected. There goes one course. The breakdown begins.

Ten minutes until the bloodbath. *sigh* So unprepared. So tired. So downtrodden. On the plus side, I think the prof has a crush on me..  Maybe if I just write lots she will be kind.

So shaky right now…. Major deadline tomorrow morning…. and what am I doing with all this nervous energy? Putting in that last do or die push to get the job done? No. I am screwing around on Xanga, leaving little disposable comments everywhere. If you’re here maybe you got one. I write these private motivational posts that I totally ignore laying out exactly what and when things need to get done. No one wants to hear this…. lame post, lame post, lame post. Jittery, I like that word. Makes me think of a dancing skeleton from an old black and white mickey mouse cartoon. Discombobulated is a good one too, knohow just refreshed that into my working vocab. Combulate. Stimulate. Masta bait. Maybe that would calm me a little. Too bad I’m at work. I still have coffee left.. At this point I think it might give me a murmur. oOooh wear did that one come from. Murmur murmur murmur. murmur murmur murmur….  Murmur MURMUR MURMUR murmur. So much energy, no focus…. when will the melatonin kick in.

oh, and I found a little bug in Xanga.. If you add a comment on one of your own posts, delete it, then make another comment, and then delete that one too, your comments will not be counted properly. You will be down one… They teach us to notice this kind of crap in computer science, it means they aren’t counting/storing the data properly.

Two hours until dawn. Sitting in a wooded glen at the base of my mountain I silently rest, gazing through the darkness. It is a favorite spot, concealed under sparse pine branches and overlooking a stretch of ancient mountain trail. Slowly, delibrately I sweep my heavy lidded eyes across the trail towards the jagged mountain base. Rival trolls covet my territory with intense jealousy. The mounain is abundant with deep complex caves and passageways. I maintain vigilance. A shadow shift, movement at a cave entrance. My eyelids snap wide awake as the pupils contract. It is a mounted horse. Rage explodes inside of me at the thought of a human tresspassing in my home. I wait and watch intensely. The human slowly emerges from the cave and begins a slow descent cautiously down the old mountain trail. I smolder with anticipation and silently prepare for my ambush. I have launched countless attacks from this perch, launching myself out of the brush and onto the path in seconds.

The plan. There are questions….. There are notes……. There is an exam…… I am nervous….. feel headed for a crash….. how to calm….. how to focus…… how to deal with the xmas lights…….

Solution….. make your little notes…. these will force you to recognize more and more of the material. These little notes will help.

Let the questions guide you through the notes… then flesh them out….. 30 minutes per question… Have the Notes on the computer screen. Have the question booklet in front of you….. Clear everything else… Assignment notes, binder, pencil case on the floor. Log book out of sight. As much simplicity as you can manage. Just the three things (1) the question booklet (2) the notes (3) the notes on the screen. That’s it.

Xanga wise….. possible post topics….. won’t be good posting tonight. Nervousness, chaos, You’re going to loose steam rapidly….. Weight the work to the front half and remember you’ve still got the coffee….

I don’t think I am going to bother to write down when and what I update my music box with since I know I am fated to play with it incessantly. I stripped out a couple songs that I discovered were in Tower Records top 1000 albums (Scissors Sisters and Lost Prophets). “The public gets what the public wants, but I want nothing of what societies got.” “The public wants what the public gets, but I don’t get what the society wants.” I added some rap too. I really do listen to more rap than my playlist reflects. I just ate 6 donuts for breakfast…. bleahhhh. I need to do groceries. I am a bloated piggie.

I wrote a second part to my little troll fantasy but I suppose I will keep it as a private entry. Maybe I will flesh it out and declassify later. Writing that was cathartic. A fun way to vent the aggression and frustration that has been building lately. This semester has tied me into knots. I’ve felt lately that I’m not meant to be sitting at a computer coding mathematical models all day, I’m not meant for an urban environment. It isn’t natural, it makes me want to scream. I want to go back home to Northwestern Ontario and fish and hunt and play outdoor hockey and ski and enjoy bonfires in the woods. I want to go back to clean air and lakes and throw this toxic life away. The first time I ever flew over Toronto at night, looking out my window seat, I began to comprehend the absolute enormity of it and I actually became physically ill. It seemed like the city covered the entire earth and it blew my mind. I felt trapped. By living in this type of environment you never realize there is another way to feel, to live, the peace of truly being in pure wilderness, the rightness of it. I feel very blessed to have had that experience for a great deal of my childhood. I think the human male is being hammered into a societal role that’s a poor fit. This is a theme I feel that Fight Club and Chuck Pahlaniuk books capture well. I’m not meant to sit at a cubicle all day and then come home and sit in front of a TV all night. Millions of years of fighting for my food and women is ingrained deep in my genes. The violent tendencies are there, just suppressed underneath layers and layers of society. For this reason Macbeth is one of my favorite stories. They tried to take a great fighter and pass him off as a king. Macbeth is pushed and pulled and manipulated to do things not in his nature, making him totally miserable until everything finally breaks down… and as the people of his country are calling for his death, swarming the castle, wanting blood, he lets everything go and begins to see clearly again. He is not a governor, he is a great warrior. So he suits up in his armor, mounts a horse, and charges out of the castle to face the mob knowing he is going to die… yet he is filled with joy to finally be able to battle again, to know what it feels like to live again. At this point I envision him charging out thinking “Bring it on. I’m taking at least fifty of you motherfuckers out.” (but in flowery Shakesperean.). Then he fights valiantly and viciously until he is eventually overwhelmed. I love uncompromising characters.

Corporally: There is a party going on here at work thrown by a gay couple. They tipped me a twenty to make sure things go smoothly (ie. lots of lube… J/K). I suppose I can deal with being called sweetie and honey by grown men for another night. (this isn’t the first gay party I’ve had to oversee.) I actually know more gay guys than I can count on my fingers and toes. I could probably count four of them as casual friends. What else.. I became a big fan of Broken Social Scene today. I revisited their 2003 album and was in the perfect mood for it… it soothed my tattered psyche. I saw my favorite coffee girl at the Spoke. She was wearing black nail polish and reading and highlighting notes from the cinema journal. A film student maybe… maybe I should have went that route….

Part 2:

A rare gathering of the trolls. The setting, a forest clearing. There is a bonfire with peasants slowly roasting above, the smell is intoxicating.  I look around, even amongst my own kind I am solitary. I am evaluating the hierarchy of power and where I fall. It seems I am regarded as repect worthy yet somewhere below the highest rung of power. The group seemingly in charge of this loose association brim with with pomp and self importance. They think they are so cunning. They are loud and crude, manipulative and condescending towards the lower castes. I make no effort to approach or rebuke their cautious acknowledgements of my presence. I know it is not my imposing physical stature that unnerves them. It is my contented silence. It is the complex dark intelligence that smolders behind my eyes that they catch a subconscious glimpse of when they make eye contact.

I am a troll with a big fucking axe. It is dripping with a thick mixture of horse and human blood. The sky is pure black, rolling unseen clouds pass slowly by. The icy wind whipping through the desolate barren mountain side cools my burning rage. My massive corded green muscles feel satisfyingly swollen and tight, jaw still clenched as I savour the bloodlust from this solitary encounter. I gaze down at the fresh iron-shelled corpse with disgust, the tremendous size of the dark liquidy crevasse running across the chest is obscene. That arrogant worm. I reach down and dig my sharp foul nails into the soft jelly like eye sockets, positioning the body so I can defile my prize. I raise my wicked axe high and bring it down with ungodly force through the knight’s thick neck, cleaving the head effortlessly. I pick it up, examine the still sneering mouth. Turning it over, I sink my large fangs deeply into the neck still gushing copious amounts of thick dark tangy red nectar. I love it, chewing and tongueing the flesh, feeling it between my teeth, slowly running down my throat. The bastard thought he could take me down, prove his worth to the other pathetic human maggots. They all die. The magnitude of the evil power corsing through my body is incomprehensible. It lends me strength and skill greater than all. No one will ever take me down.